Early Photography of China Collection: A highly important collection in development.. Various places, 1850s-1930s

The most valuable collection of early China photography in private hands, the Early Photography of China Collection includes the greatest masterworks of China photography by the foremost photographers working in China in the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the 20th century. The collection has been assembled over the course of many years, and we continue to expand and refine it as worthy photographs and archives become available. This collection, unrivaled in quality and extent in private hands, provides a unique opportunity to own one of the greatest collections of Chinese photography extant. We are eager to acquire important China photographs, from individual objects to albums and collections. We invite you to contact us.

Collection in development

Photographic Views of Sherman’s Campaign, embracing scenes of the occupation of Nashville, the great battles around Chattanooga and Lookout Mountain, the campaign of Atlanta, march to the sea, and the great raid through the Carolinas. [New York: Press of Wynkoop & Hallenbeck], [1866]

FIRST EDITION. George N. Barnard’s Photographic Views of Sherman’s Campaign is, together with Alexander Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book, one of the two greatest photographic monuments of the Civil War. Its 61 original mounted photographs include some of the most famous images of the war.

$390,000

Magnificent Album of Mammoth Photographs of the American West, with other subjects. various, ca. 1865-1880s

This magnificent American West photograph album contains an astounding 21 mammoth photographs by leading photographers including Carleton Watkins, Charles R. Savage, and Isaiah West Taber, as well as other important photographs.

$350,000

Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the War. Washington, D.C.: Philp and Solomons, [1865-66]

FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE of the most famous photographically illustrated American book of the nineteenth century.

$275,000

Her personal archive of approximately 350 photographs. [Hampstead and elsewhere], 1858-1864

This tremendous discovery is the extensive photographic archive of the little-known Victorian photographer Emma Frances Johnston. This is apparently the earliest comprehensive archive of a female photographer in private hands. Beginning around 1858, Johnston made this wonderful series of portraits of her friends and extended family comprising the intellectual and social world of nineteenth- century Hampstead in London.

$245,000

An extraordinary collection of photographs of Central Park by its first official photographer. New York, 1862

Pioneering photographs of Central Park. One of the earliest photographers to work in New York

$135,000

Photographic portrait inscribed by Whitman with four lines from “Salut au Monde!”. Toronto: Edy Brothers, 1880

A rare portrait with a Leaves of Grass quotation in Whitman’s hand. The photogenic and self-promoting poet sat for (and gave away) many photographs, but very rarely did he inscribe them with his verse. Here he writes lines from his poem “Salut au Monde!”—his “calling card to the world, as well as one of his most successful compositions.”

$75,000

Photographs of the Holy Land and Egypt comprising: [I:] Sinai and Palestine; [II:] Lower Egypt, Thebes, and the Pyramids; [III:] Upper Egypt and Ethiopia; [IV:] Egypt, Sinai and Palestine. Supplementary Volume.. London, Glasgow, and Edinburgh:  William MacKenzie, [1863].

$72,000

Portrait of Abraham Lincoln with his son Tad. Washington, February 5, 1865

Perhaps the most delightful of the Lincoln family photographs, this portrait shows an impish Tad leaning on a table as his seemingly bemused father sits on Gardner’s studio chair. Thomas “Tad” Lincoln was the youngest of the Lincoln boys.

$65,000

Profile bust portrait of Charles Darwin, signed by Cameron. London: Colnaghi, 1868

The great Darwin portrait, Julia Margaret Cameron’s 1868 profile of Darwin is probably the most famous photograph of a 19th-century scientist. Darwin remarked, “I like this photograph very much better than any other which has been taken of me.”

$52,000